I want to look at the contention that the Bible is somewhat anachronistic, that it doesn’t matter much anymore.
There is so much that can be said in response to such a contention, but I want to talk specifically about a conversation I had recently with a man who was very sceptical about Christianity. We were discussing the Parable of the Vineyard Workers in Matthew 20:
The kingdom of heaven is like a landowner who went out early in the morning to hire men to work in his vineyard. He agreed to pay them a denarius for the day and sent them into his vineyard. "About the third hour he went out and saw others standing in the marketplace doing nothing. He told them, 'You also go and work in my vineyard, and I will pay you whatever is right.' So they went. "He went out again about the sixth hour and the ninth hour and did the same thing. About the eleventh hour he went out and found still others standing around. He asked them, 'Why have you been standing here all day long doing nothing?' 'Because no one has hired us,' they answered. "He said to them, 'You also go and work in my vineyard.'
"When evening came, the owner of the vineyard said to his foreman, 'Call the workers and pay them their wages, beginning with the last ones hired and going on to the first.' "The workers who were hired about the eleventh hour came and each received a denarius. So when those came who were hired first, they expected to receive more. But each one of them also received a denarius. When they received it, they began to grumble against the landowner. 'These men who were hired last worked only one hour,' they said, 'and you have made them equal to us who have borne the burden of the work and the heat of the day.' "But he answered one of them, 'Friend, I am not being unfair to you. Didn't you agree to work for a denarius? Take your pay and go. I want to give the man who was hired last the same as I gave you. Don't I have the right to do what I want with my own money? Or are you envious because I am generous?'
My companion’s objection was that this type of behaviour would be, in this modern capitalist world, quite foolish and economically unsound. He said, ‘Why should we trust a book that gives such bad advice?’
But to ask such a question is to miss the whole point of it all. Of course that type of altruistic behaviour would not suit in a modern day capitalist environment, but the vineyard worker is not supposed to represent an economist, he is supposed to represent God. While Christ, in telling the parable, exposes the selfish protests of the indignant workers, He also asserts that the heavenly rewards are not to be measured by what any of us deserve but by God’s grace. He gives according to what we need not according to what we deserve, for if we were given just what we deserve, we would not receive very much at all.
Some would argue that there is injustice in this parable, but could one, in all honesty, hope to see justice prevail at the expense of such grace? Those who say ‘yes’ do not really know what they say, for if God were to deal with us all on the basis of justice, He would have to attenuate His grace.
God’s love cannot be divided into quantities which suit the merits of us all, for if so, Christ died for nothing. In the parable, none were underpaid, none were treated unfairly, the whole point was that some were treated with amazing grace. God does not limit or circumscribe His grace according to our imperfect perceptions of equitability.
And it is here we can see quite clearly that any accusations of Bible anachronisms are wholly unsound. For whatever day and age the question is asked, grace will continue to be the strongest whiff of perfection that we can sense on earth. Grace is, is one sense, transcendent of time and transcendent of morality and equitability, because it is something that we cannot really achieve perfectly. Is this not one of the reasons why the Bible is thought of as anachronistic in this contemporary age?
It is not so hard to see that modern men and women are not dissimilar to the older brother in the story of the Prodigal Son. We struggle when we are asked to modify our own thoughts about standards of justice, so it is not really surprising that many people find it hard to do the same when it comes to God.
In this day and age, grace has so often been forgotten; it has been supplanted for our human scale of justice. If we are able to, by our best efforts, reintroduce the world to grace, to its timelessness, to its immutability, we might just succeed in reintroducing modern men and women to God’s word. But we can only hope to do this if we ourselves are full of grace to begin with. As Bonhoeffer said ‘Out of a hundred men, one will read the Bible; ninety nine will read the Christian’.
By the grace of God I am what I am. St Paul - 1 Corinthians 15:10
